Fosse Lane, Shepton Mallet, was a substantial Romano-British roadside settlement strung along the Fosse Way between Bath (Aquae Sulis) and Ilchester (Lindinis), active from the mid-1st century AD into the late 4th or early 5th century. The settlement extended over some 16–20 hectares and comprised stone and timber buildings, yards, wells, and ironworking debris, with associated cemeteries flanking the road — a scale that places it among the larger small towns of the Somerset countryside.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
It functioned as a local economic hub on a major arterial road, servicing through-traffic and acting as a market and craft-production centre for the surrounding rural and villa-rich landscape of the Mendip fringe, an area shaped by lead and silver extraction. The site achieved wider notoriety with the discovery of a small lead amulet bearing a chi-rho, claimed as evidence for 4th-century Christianity, though its authenticity has been seriously questioned.
Excavations by Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit and others in the 1990s, ahead of industrial development, revealed strip-buildings aligned on the Fosse Way, ironworking hearths, masonry structures including a possible shrine, and several hundred inhumation and cremation burials with grave goods including hobnailed shoes, coins, and pottery vessels. Finds assemblages — coins, brooches, and ceram
Fosse Lane, Shepton Mallet, was a substantial Romano-British roadside settlement strung along the Fosse Way between Bath (Aquae Sulis) and Ilchester (Lindinis), active from the mid-1st century AD into the late 4th or early 5th century. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
An area of the Romano-British linear village at Fosse Lane, Shepton Mallet is classified as a Roman site — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Shepton Mallet (1.5 km), Roman building at Lamyatt Beacon, Creech Hill (7.5 km), Roman building 600yds (549m) SW of Lower Sutton Farm (9.2 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any address in Britain — drawing on Roman heritage, Domesday records, scheduled monument data, archaeological finds and medieval history to reveal the complete story of a landscape.
Research the area around An area of the Romano-British linear village at Fosse Lane, Shepton Mallet